Dear someone

We fought this week. It wasn't about anything new or spectacular but I was trying to go work out and realized I couldn't yet again because you were too high when I found a cigarette butt in the middle of our kitchen floor. You brushed me off like it was nothing and I was paranoid but it was directly en route of our crawler and could have (would have) been easily ingested if I hadn't seen it. I said it was time for me to take the kids to my sister's and you said you wouldn't allow it, that you'd call the police and have me arrested of kidnapping.

After all this time I've tried to protect them from this mess of a relationship, I was so angry you threatened me with calling the police. I flashed back to all of the times you were drunk and rowdy and I felt verbally assaulted but still I didn't call. I saw your phone in your hand, said don't bother, and I called them for you.

I just wanted to ask my rights. Am I allowed to leave with them, to take them to a safer place as long as he knows where we're going? You don't have to send anyone, I just need to ask a question. 

But they had to send someone. Two people actually, and a third on the way who they called off as soon as they saw there was no real trouble. No one seemed to care about how frequently he gets high. Said I had to talk to a judge. Said we should cool off and spend the day apart. Said I probably shouldn't go where you couldn't "access" the kids. You spend your life parked on the couch feet away from them and you don't "access" them. Interesting time to start needing access.

I wasn't calling the cops "on you," I was just tired of not hearing back from this stupid small-town lawyer I've been calling. I just want to know my rights.

We have spoken little since. You're angry. Maybe you're entitled to be. I'm embarrassed they came, but maybe I was entitled to call too.

I keep thinking about how things could have been different over the past two weeks. How could I have supported you more? I could have listened better, not given you an ultimatum... but then I come back to the facts: You are smoking pot up to times a day, for an hour or so at a time. This doesn't include your lengthy naps, dead on the couch as our older son flits around you, jumping on you at times in excitement over the latest little adventure he creates. Would listening have prevented this?

I made an appointment for a couples therapist this weekend. I'd been calling for over a week and she finally returned my call a few days after the police incident, our stony silence now second nature. I told you I made it, asked if you'd come and was angry when all you said was "maybe." Totally apathetic.

All this time I've been thinking along the lines of "man he really has a lot of work to do before I can trust him again" etc. But lately it has occurred to me that perhaps you'd quite like if I left for good, left you to your addictions. Although I will never leave the kids with you again, who—despite your seeming ignorance of their need for routine, and stability, and essentials like diapers and food—you do seem to genuinely love. "Maybe."

So I've got 4 days left to stew, to see if perhaps we have anything left to salvage in this relationship.